City of Scoundrels: A Q&A with author Gart Krist

Gary Krist's latest book, City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, masterfully tells the story of 12 volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder roiled a city already on the brink of collapse. Krist is also the author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

You can learn more about this book by reading my review.

Thanks Gary for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Q: Why did you write City of Scoundrels?

A: I wanted to write about a city under extraordinary stress.  The evolution of any city, particularly a city of immigrants, involves lots of conflict, with various ethnic, racial, and class-based groups competing against each other for power and prominence.  Often, this kind of competition works to the city’s advantage, channeling energies in constructive directions.  But 1919 in Chicago was one of those times when the energies of competition turned destructive, and instead of working to build the city, started tearing it apart.

Q: The book opens with a dramatic recounting of the Wingfoot air express disaster on July 21^st, 1919. I think most readers will be as surprised as I was to learn of this disaster. Why do you think this disaster, the first aviation disaster in American history, is mostly forgotten and what impact did this disaster ultimately have on aviation travel in the beginning of the 20^th century?

A: I’m not sure why it’s been forgotten, but it may have something to do with the fact that the accident led to no court cases.  Aviation was so new at this point that there was very little law governing it, so prosecutors ultimately had to drop the case.  In fact, a number of new laws governing aviation over urban areas were generated—in Chicago and in Washington DC—as a result of the Wingfoot Disaster.  The accident also set into motion the transition toward using helium rather than hydrogen in airships.  Helium was a rarer and more expensive gas, but far less flammable.

Q: Would it be fair to consider former Chicago Mayor ‘Big’ Bill Thompson as the poster child for corruption within Chicago politics?

A: Corruption existed in Chicago before Big Bill and after him, but few Chicago politicians have matched his record for dishonesty and malfeasance.  Historians generally regard him as one of the worst urban mayors in American history, though I argue in the book that he did have some virtues, like his efforts to bring African-Americans into the political process of the city

Q: How do you believe the Presidential election of 1920 may have been different if Bill Thompson had not worked against Governor Frank Lowden’s attempt to secure the Republican nomination?

A: It’s at least possible that if Thompson and his delegates had supported him, Lowden would have been able to break the deadlock with the other frontrunner at the convention, General Leonard Wood.  If that had happened, there would have been no occasion for the “smoke-filled room” negotiations that led to the nomination of Warren G. Harding.  If Lowden had gotten the nomination instead of Harding, he’d probably have gone on to win the 1920 election, and who knows what the 20s would have looked like?

Q: What was the most surprising finding regarding activities in Chicago during this time period that you discovered as part of writing The City of Scoundrels?

A: I was surprised at just how unstable and contentious American urban life could be, even as late as 1919.  We think things in the US are precarious today, with a looming terrorist threat and a populace constantly at war with itself on basic principles; but our lives in 2012 are a model of security and civility compared to what they were just a hundred years ago. In 1919 you had vast numbers of workers on strike or locked out of their jobs, bombs going off weekly in offices and apartment buildings, black and white neighbors killing each other on the streets, and a rising sense of the dangers posed by everything from the stranger living next door to the brave new technologies on the street and in the air.  Americans in 1919 were living through the rough adolescence of the Modern Age, when change was happening so fast that our ability to control those changes couldn’t keep up.  Compared to that kind of chaos, the uncertainties of contemporary urban life seem like child’s play.

Q: One of the positive messages that I took away from this book was that no matter how devastating and overwhelming events during a period of time may seem it is always possible to recover and prosper again. What were the major influences that resulted in the dramatic recovery of Chicago and its citizens?

A: People—and the cities they create—are amazingly resilient creatures.  Evolution has shaped us to keep moving, to get up again whenever we’ve been knocked down, so I suppose you could say that human nature was the major factor.  But the passing of the postwar economic dislocation helped, too.  Much of the problem in 1919 stemmed from the tough transition from a wartime to a postwar economy.  By the early 1920s, though, after a steep postwar recession, the economy was able to right itself again.

Q: Is there an interesting story or character from your research that was not included in The City of Scoundrels but may be of interest to readers?

A: I wish I could have found room in the book for the story of the rise of jazz in Chicago.  This was the era when lots of jazz musicians were coming north from New Orleans and creating a vibrant jazz culture on Chicago’s South Side.  But I’m hoping to tell a bit of that story in my next book, which is about New Orleans in this same era.

Q: How can readers learn more about The City of Scoundrels book?
A: Their best bet would probably be to check out my website at www.garykrist.com, where they can, among other things, read the prologue to the book.